Help please!

liss90

We are in the process of buying our first home after years of renting.
We have had our survey back and a few structural things came up. I posted a few days ago about this and got some really helpful advice.
We have had an engineer go round and price up the repairs to be done.
We have been quoted: £375+vat for chimney, £475+vat for damp to the kitchen and £575+vat for corbelling to the kitchen to be updated although this is not urgent.
We will also have the hassle of redecorating parts of kitchen and not being able to redecorate for up to six weeks while plaster drys out. We also will not be able to put skirting boards back etc.
We really can not afford this as I said earlier that we have been renting and have three children so therefore we have the costs furnishing from scratch. Although we are buying nearly everything secondhand and have picked up some wonderful things from freecycle.
Would it be fair to ask the vendor to pay for the chimney and damp. We would then pay for kitchen redecoration and updating corbelling when we have the money. They would pay approx £1000 for those two jobs.
The estate agent has said they are not willing to lower house price as they will not be able to afford to move. I should add that the vendor knew she had a problem with the chimney four years ago and I did ask the estate agent to have a look at the roof void to make sure the chimney stack was not unsupported. He got an engineer to look at the ceiling underneath but not in the roof!
If we pull out of this sale will we need to pay the arrangement fee to the mortgage company - we got this added onto our loan.
Many thanks in advance.

Doozergirl

If you can't afford it then stand your ground. Ask for them to pay for all the work to be done, you will arrange redecoration costs. They either arrange work themselves or knock the exact amount of work off the house price. If they are reliant on this sale for their new house they're going to have to give.

This is going to come up on anyone's survey, not just yours and each time that stand to lose the sale. There's £1700 short here - they should pay it. If they really can't afford it maybe they can negotiate some money off their purchase if there's a chance that the chain may collapse as a result. It's certainly not unheard of.

Doozergirl

I'm not being harsh on them you know - items come up in survey and it's generally the vendors responsibility to sort it. Prices are constantly renegotiated after survey.

Who's not budging in reality, the agent or the vendor?

liss90

Just a quick update. The estate agent has phoned the vendor and they have refused to pay for any repairs at all. They can not afford it. So it looks like we will be pulling out. I think even if we could afford these repairs I would not want to out of principle. The estate agent is laying it on really thickly about how these vendors already gave us a good price and they are over stretching theirselves already. We were going to buy the house in good structural order when agreeing the price and we certainly are not prepared to pay repairs that the vendors already knew needed doing. If they had been honest and told us we may have considered it.

LouLouHelen

Bad new about the house - you shouldn't have to pay the arrangement fee is it has been added to the loan - the lender will just have to swallow it.

cattie

Don't forget though that you will still be out of pocket for the survey & legal fees to date. Also you need to keep in mind that as most older houses will need some kind work needing doing, so if your finances are really stretched to the limit it may be best for you to look for a house with less age to it.

It's never wise to completely overstretch yourself when buying a property as you really do need to keep a little reserve in the bank for urgent repairs & maintenance. As many homeowners will confirm, there is always something or other to have to pay out on & you can need pretty deep pockets at these times.

Good luck anyway & if you do really want this property I hope the vendors will compromise a bit on the price to allow for the work needing done, but it sounds as if they are possibly overstretched financially themselves.

Doozergirl

I'm sorry if you lose this house. At least you're sensible and appreciate that you can't afford to overstretch yourself, unlike your vendor. You may find if you do pull out that someone further up the chain is able to salvage a deal in order to save the chain.